Concentration camps
This article presents a partial list of the most prominent Nazi German concentration camps and extermination camps set up across Europe before and during the course of World War II and the Holocaust. A more complete list drawn up in 1967 by the German Ministry of Justice names about 1,200 camps and subcamps in countries occupied by Germany,Bundesministerium der Justiz (2011), List of concentration camps and their outposts in alphabetical order. Internet Archive. while the Jewish Virtual Library writes: "It is estimated that the Germans established 15,000 camps in the occupied countries."[https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/cclist.html Concentration Camp Listing] Sourced from Van Eck, Ludo Le livre des Camps. Belgium: Editions Kritak; and Gilbert, Martin Atlas of the Holocaust. New York: William Morrow 1993 . In this on-line site are the names of 149 camps and 814 subcamps, organized by country. Some of the data presented in this table originates from the monograph titled The War Against the Jews by Lucy Dawidowicz among similar others.Search Results: Mapping the SS Concentration Camp System. Alphabetical listing. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Further Reading. Bergen, Dawidowicz, Gilbert, Gutman, Hilberg, Yahil. In 1933–1939, before the onset of war, most prisoners consisted of German Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats, Roma, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, and persons accused of 'asocial' or socially 'deviant' behavior by the Germans.Holocaust Encyclopedia, Nazi Camps. Introduction. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. They were not utilized to sustain the German war effort. Although the term 'concentration camp' is often used as a general term for all German camps during World War II, there were in fact several types of concentration camps in the German camp system. Holocaust scholars make a clear distinction between death camps and concentration camps which served a number of war related purposes including prison facilities, labor camps, prisoner of war camps, and transit camps among others.Peter Vogelsang & Brian B. M. Larsen (2002), The difference between concentration camps and extermination camps. The Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Concentration camps served primarily as detention and slave labor exploitation centers. An estimated 15 to 20 million people were imprisoned in 42,500 camps and ghettos, and often pressed into slavery during the subsequent years, according to research by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum conducted more recently. The system of about 20,000 concentration camps in Germany and German-occupied Europe played a pivotal role in economically sustaining the German reign of terror. Most of them were destroyed by the Germans in an attempt to hide the evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity; nevertheless tens of thousands of prisoners sent on death marches were liberated by the Allies afterward. Extermination camps were designed and built exclusively to kill prisoners on a massive scale, often immediately upon arrival. The extermination camps of Operation Reinhard such as Bełżec, Sobibór and Treblinka served as "death factories" in which German SS and police murdered nearly 2,700,000 Jews by asphyxiation with poison gas, shooting, and extreme work under starvation conditions.Holocaust Encyclopedia, Killing Centers: An Overview. . United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Also in: The concentration camps held large groups of prisoners without trial or judicial process. In modern historiography, the term refers to a place of systemic mistreatment, starvation, forced labour and murder. Selected examples Statistical and numerical data presented in the table below originates from a wide variety of publications and therefore does not constitute a representative sample of the total. The Ghettos in German-occupied Europe are generally not included in this list. Relevant information can be found at the separate List of Nazi-era ghettos. See also * German camps in occupied Poland during World War II * Concentration camps in France * Nazi concentration camps in Norway * Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics * Research Materials: Max Planck Society Archive * Holocaust victims and death toll * Concentration camps in the Independent State of Croatia References }} Media Bibliography * External links * The World of the Camps: Labor and Concentration Camps on the Yad Vashem website * List of German Concentration Camps During the Holocaust, Holocaust Center of Northern California References